Who's Afraid Of Red, Yellow and Black: The Curators' Picks

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Who's Afraid Of Red, Yellow and Black: The Curators' Picks

  • Gauthier Hubert VARIATIES VAN DE AANGREZINGSINDICATOREN, 2000
    and (right) VARIATIONS DES INDICATIONS LIMITROPHES (2000)
    François: "Gauthier Hubert won the 1999 ‘Prix de la jeune peinture belge’ for his works dealing with Belgium. Here, he has drawn two houses. One Flemish, one Walloon, located on either side of the linguistic border. These two houses - one red, one black - are drawn on paper which has yellowed with age. And it’s a way of playing with the old debate around the Belgian linguistic frontier. It’s an invisible frontier [between the Flemish and Walloons].

    Emmanuel: "Belgium has been politically and linguistically divided between Flanders and Walloonia since 1963. Little towns on the border have a mix of French and Dutch speaking households, and they had this border that no one really asked for, except probably the Flemish movement, who wanted to have more cultural agency"

    François: "When you sit in the royal park, within a circle of two square km, you find five parliaments! That’s Belgium. Voila. Belgians – we are never sure of our own identity. We speak three languages. There is never a central, strong identity. What’s the relationship between language(s) and identity? And this contributes to this spirit of asking about relationships between this and that. Identity has always to do with our three languages."
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  • Jean Schwind BELGIAN TRICOLOR ENSEMBLE
    François: "Jean Schwind was a ‘mystificator’, Here, this is a little holder for office stamps. One stamp its written INTERNATIONAL APPROPRIATION ORGANIZATION.
    And I felt that's what we've done with all the great Modern painters that we've put in this exhibition! That's typical Belgium humour - artists like Marcel Broodthaers and Jean Schwind have authorized themselves to do this, we can do it also. It's a tribute! It's an homage to that spirit of independence and appropriation."
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  • Juan François d’Oultremont DRAPEAU DALTONIEN
    Emmanuel: "It’s the Belgian flag in grey without the colours. And it will be hanging on the office facing outside. On the outer side it is grey, on the inner side, it has colours. Daltonien means ‘colour-blind’. It was a good idea to put it facing outside, because we're saying, we know Belgium is great, so we will keep the colours inside! This flag has hung in the streets of Brussels in official places!"

    François: "And people loved it! People found it great, it’s a sign that you have the right to play with something. Here, it is not a problem, for most people. Maybe the extremists don’t like it."
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  • Benoît Felix DRAPEAU BELGE A TIRETTES (2007-2024)
    François: "Benoît Felix plays with this sense of identity. He took the flag and put a zipper between each colour, so people can choose to unzip them and change them around. That’s maybe the most political artwork here – but it’s funny. Humour is our common culture. This flag says you can just play with it. I think it’s important that we can play with flags."

    Emmanuel: "That’s a typical Belgian approach. I like how [the Lebanese writer] Amin Malouf talks about identity – it’s like a cobweb. Everything is unsure – if you take one thing away, everything moves. That makes our region what it is, and it has been for centuries."
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  • François de Coninck LA QUESTION NE SE POSE PAS, IL Y A TROP DE VENT (2007)
    François: "This is the official internet domain logo for Belgium, .be. I’ve turned it into a Shakespearian question! I prefer questions, to answers…"

    Emmanuel: "To be sold or not to be sold - we don’t know yet. Probably for sale, we don’t know."
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